FLOWERS pluckt upon a grave by moonlight, pale And suffering, from the spiritual light
They grew in: these, with all the love and blessing That prayers can gain of God, I send to thee!
If one of these poor flowers be worthy thee,
The sweetest Soul that I have known on earth,
The tenderest Soul that I can hope to know,
Hold that one flower, and kneel, and pray for me.
Pray for me, Comrade! Close to thee I creep,
Touching thy raiment: thy good eyes are calm;
But see! the fitful fever in mine eyes
Pray for me! bid all good men pray for me!
If Love will serve, lo! how I love my Friend—
If Reverence, lo! how I reverence him-
If Faith be asked in something beautiful,
Lo! what a splendor is my faith in him!
Now, as thou risest gently from thy knees,
Must we go different ways ?-thou followest
Thy path, I mine; but all go westering,
And all will meet among the Hills of God!
Thy face sails with me on a darker path,
And smiles me onward! For a time, farewell;
Wear in thy breast a few of these poor flowers,
And let their scent remind my Friend of me!
Flowers of a grave, — yet deathless! Be my love
For thee as deathless! I am beckoned on; ·
But meantime, these, with all the love and blessing
That prayers can gain of God, I give to thee!
FROM BOOK II: THE MAN AND THE SHADOW.'
O PERISHABLE Brother, what a World!
How wondrous and how fair! Look! look! and think!
What magic mixed the tints of yonder west,
Wherein, upon a cushion soft as moss,
A heaven pink-tinted like a maiden's flesh,
The dim Star of the Ocean lieth cool
In palpitating silver, while beneath
Her image, putting luminous feelers forth,
Bathes liquid, like a living thing o' the Sea.
What magic? What Magician? O my Brother,
What strange Magician, mixing up those tints,
Pouring the water down, and sending forth
The crystal air like breath, snowing the heavens
With luminous jewels of the day and night,
Looked down, and saw thee lie a lifeless clod,
And lifted thee, and moulded thee to shape,
Colored thee with the sunlight till thy blood
Ran ruby, poured the chemic tints o' the air
Through eyes that kindled into azure, stole
The flesh-tints of the lily and the rose
To make thee wondrous fair unto thyself,
Knitted thy limbs with ruby bands, and blew
Into thy hollow heart until it stirred,
Then to the inner chamber of his Heaven
Withdrawing, left in midst of such a world
The living apparition of a Man,
A mystery amid the mysteries,
A lonely Semblance, with a wild appeal
To which no form that lives, however dear,
Hath given a tearless answer, -a Shape, a Soul,
Projecting ever as it ageth on
A SHADE which is a silence and a sleep.
I saw a Hind at sunrise- dumb he stood,
And saw the Dawn press with her rosy feet
The dewy sweetness from the fields of hay,
Felt the World brighten - leaves and flowers and grass
Grow luminous—yet beside the pool he stood,
Wherein, in the gray vapor of the marsh,
His mottled oxen stood with large blank eyes
And steaming nostrils: and his eyes like theirs
Were empty, and he hummed a surly song
Out of a hollow heart akin to beast's:
Yea, sun nor star had little joy for him,
Nor tree nor flower, to him the world was all
On the hill
Mere matter for a ploughshare.
Above him, with loose jerkin backward blown
By winds of morning, and his white brow bare
Like marble, stood a singer- one of those
Who write in heart's-blood what is blotted out
With ox-gall; and his Soul was in his eyes
To see the coming of the beautiful Day,
His lips hung heavy with beauty, and he looked
Down on the surly clod among the kine,
And sent his Soul unto him through his eyes,
Transfiguring him with beauty and with praise
Into the common pathos. Of such stuffs
Is mankind shapen, both, like thee and me,
Wear westward, to the melancholy Realm
Where all the gathered Shades of all the world
Lie as a cloud around the feet of God.
This darkens all my seeking. O my friend!
If the whole world had royal eyes like thine,
I were much holpen; but to look upon
Eyes like the ox-herd's, blank as very beast's,
Shoots sorrow to the very roots of life.
Aye! there were hope indeed if each Man seemed
Is curst with these blank faces, still as stone,
And darkening inward. Have these dumb things Souls? If they be tenantless, dare thou and I
Christen by so sublime a name the Wind
Bred in the wasting body?
In yonder city that afar away
Staineth the peaceful blue with its foul breath,
I passed into a dimly-lighted hall,
And heard a lanthorn-jawed Philosopher
Clawing his straw-like bunch of yellow hair,
With skeletonian periods and a voice
Shrill as the grating of two bones, 'O Soul,'
Quoth he, 'O beauteousness we name the Soul,
Thou art the Flower of all the life o' the World,
And not in every clod of flesh shoots forth
The perfect apparition of thy tints
Immortal! Flower and scented bloom of things,
Thou growest on no dunghill in the sun!'
A flower, a flower immortal? How I laughed!
Clip me the lily from its secret roots,
And farewell all the wonder of the flower!
THE DREAM OF THE WORLD WITHOUT DEATH.
FROM BOOK III.; 'SONGS OF CORRUPTION.'
Now, sitting by her side, worn out with weeping,
Behold, I fell to sleep, and had a vision,
Wherein I heard a wondrous Voice intoning:
Crying aloud, 'The Master on His throne
Openeth now the seventh seal of wonder,
And beckoneth back the angel men name Death.'
And at His feet the mighty Angel kneeleth,
Breathing not; and the Lord doth look upon him,
Saying, 'Thy wanderings on earth are ended.'
And lo! the mighty Shadow sitteth idle
Even at the silver gates of heaven,
Drowsily looking in on quiet waters,
And puts his silence among men no longer.
The world was very quiet. Men in traffic
Cast looks over their shoulders; pallid seamen
Shivered to walk upon the decks alone;
And women barred their doors with bars of iron,
In the silence of the night; and at the sunrise
Trembled behind the husbandman afield.
I could not see a kirkyard near or far;
I thirsted for a green grave,
and my
Was weary for the white gleam of a tombstone.
But hearkening dumbly, ever and anon
I heard a cry out of a human dwelling,
And felt the cold wind of a lost one's going.
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